Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing

Emerald Article: My years with B2B marketing in India: reflections and

learnings from a journey of 40 years
Sharad Sarin

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My years with B2B marketing in India: reflections

and learnings from a journey of 40 years
Sharad Sarin
Marketing and Strategic Management Area, Xavier Labour Relations Institute, School of Business and Human Resources,
Jamshedpur, India
Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to review the authors association with the discipline of business-to-business (B2B) marketing for nearly 40 years. Of these,
34 were spent teaching in a postgraduate institute, i.e. the Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur, India.
Design/methodology/approach The paper is organized around nine lenses for reflection. These provide a comprehensive coverage of the authors
experiences. The paper critically evaluates the authors performance as a B2B marketing instructor, researcher, trainer and consultant. It examines the
evolution of B2B markets and marketing in India and traces the symbiotic relationship between academics and practice.
Findings The reflection reveals that B2B marketing practices have benefited and improved a great deal in India due to interventions from academia.
However, the most disturbing aspect of B2B marketing practices in India is all-pervasive corruption. There seems to be no solution for it.
Practical implications An important audience for this paper is young faculty members. It is hoped the paper will be able to motivate them for more
research and publications. The challenge for B2B marketing is to fuel the declining interest in the discipline. The B2B marketing discipline in India needs
more faculty members, and substantial home-grown research articles and cases.
Originality/value The paper illustrates that the Indian B2B scenario has changed a great deal: the impact of competition and globalisation has
transformed B2B marketing practices beyond recognition.
Keywords B2B marketing in India, Indian perspective in B2B marketing, History of B2B marketing in India, Indian B2B marketing practices, India,
Business-to-business marketing
Paper type General review

of the Indian perspective. The historical narration is recap of

the developments. There is no attempt to develop newer
concepts. Through anecdotes, I have attempted to provide
glimpses of the reality. This paper is confined to a review and
reflections of my experiences only. It does not cover other
Indian instructors, trainers and researchers. Figure 1
describes the nine lenses used for reflections.

An executive summary for managers and executive

readers can be found at the end of this article.

Introduction
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will
come even more effective action (Peter Drucker).

With over 40 years of association with the discipline of

industrial or B2B marketing, I can claim to be a historian for
B2B marketing, at least for India. Layers of experience and
exposure have equipped me with both the depth and width of
the plurality of the issues and challenges of B2B markets and
marketing. As 40 years is a very long period, selection of what
to share and what to ignore has been a major challenge. My
reflections include a synthesis of the sum total of what I have
learned and shared with a large body of students and
practising managers. The paper is organised around nine
lenses. These lenses should provide comprehensive coverage

Lens 1
Evolution of B2B markets and marketing in India: from
rationing to value-based marketing
Innumerable books and articles are available on the Indian
economy and business environment of last 60 years. Until
1991, the license and permit Raj was the dominant trait of
the Indian economy. A deep nexus existed between
politicians, bureaucrats and favoured business organisations.
This situation a ensured virtual monopoly of Indian
marketers. Whosoever had the capacity had their market
share. The selling task of B2B marketers was mainly restricted
to networking with the members of the buying centre and
the management of aggrandisement, i.e. the use of cash and
gifts to obtain orders. A combination of production and
selling orientations was widely practised. The production

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0885-8624.htm

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing

27/3 (2012) 160 168
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0885-8624]
[DOI 10.1108/08858621211207199]

Received: May 2010

Accepted: September 2010

160

My years with B2B marketing in India

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing

Sharad Sarin

Volume 27 Number 3 2012 160 168

Figure 1 The lenses for reflections

orientation enabled practice of the belief that physical

availability of whatever we can produce is enough the rest
would be taken care of by the customers. The selling
orientation led to the belief that selling alone is the entirety
of the B2B marketing task. In this scenario, customers had
no choice and no voice. Sharing two episodes from the early
1980s will provide a feel of the reality.
The first episode is when I asked the Director of Marketing
of a leading steel firm to share some weaknesses of his
department. The Director was frank and bold enough to
state: We do not know where our customers are located. He
did not say that we do not know who they are. This, as he
explained, was due to an acute shortage of steel in India so
instead of his marketing executives visiting customers for sales
and marketing, the customers used to visit their offices. He
then showed the long line of customers waiting outside his
office. I remember my first assignment of measuring of
customer satisfaction for the same steel company in 1983.
The availability of steel being critical, the customer in spite
of a mouthful of adverse feedback pleaded with me not to
disclose their identity. They feared that knowledge of their
negative comments may lead to the suspension of the supply
of steel to them. Competition, post-1991, has completely
transformed the marketing practices of this company. To me,

this steel company would be a role model for B2B marketing

for the entire steel industry in India.
The second episode is of a leader in the field of aluminium.
Not knowing anyone, I had knocked on a door, the sign on
which read General Manager Commercial. After briefing
him about the purpose of my research, I requested him to
introduce me to the marketing manager concerned. The
prompt response came, You are meeting him. With a
bewildered look on my face, I said But you are heading the
Commercial Department. He answered, I am also heading
the marketing function. To this my response was You are
too senior for the purpose of my data collection. To this, he
responded: In that case you have to meet my dispatch
clerk!. He then explained that customers paid 100 per cent
in advance for the products of his company. After collecting
the advance, his company issued a delivery note, which was
handed over to the dispatch clerk. He then monitored the
dispatch from factory to the destination indicated by the
customers. For this job we do not need any manager
including a marketing manager was his concluding remark.
The rapid transformation
The opening up of the Indian economy post-1991 led to the
rapid toning up of Indian B2B marketers. They needed to
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Sharad Sarin

Volume 27 Number 3 2012 160 168

Lens 2

survive in a globally competitive environment. The first five

years witnessed Indian companies large and small trying
to obtain certifications like ISO 9000, 9001 and 14000 and
such like. This helped them to improve their processes. These
certifications were seen as passports for their export
business. Besides the initiatives of obtaining ISO
certifications, several other initiatives, like total quality
management (TQM), total productive management (TPM),
Six Sigma, value analysis, quality circle, supply chain
management and many more were introduced.
An important initiative has been the evaluation of business
performance on models similar to Malcolm Baldrige award of
the USA. Many organisations, including the Tata Group of
companies and the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII),
have their own versions to ensure comprehensive
measurement of the performance of firms on a regular basis.
The pressures of competition, combined with the adoption
of techniques and frameworks to improve their process
orientation, implied improving firms customer orientation
and broadening of the role and scope of the marketing
function. Firms started admitting that selling alone is not
marketing. CEOs began ridiculing the same set of superperformers as useless, as they did not even know the
difference between sales and marketing.
Enhancing the customer orientation of not only the
marketing team, but of the whole organisation, became the
preoccupation of CEOs. To improve their marketing
capabilities, companies started nominating executives for
management development programmes. Soon the demand for
customised programmes from wide variety of B2B firms
increased. Finally the wisdom has dawned that it is not we
but the customer who should be king.
In 1984, i.e. nearly 26 years ago, I identified five causes that
led to the neglect of industrial marketing in India (Sarin,
1984). These were:
1 an economy of shortages;
2 myopic top management;
3 the restricted or small size of Indian markets, preventing
R&D and innovation;
4 the role of aggrandisement, i.e. corruption in B2B buying;
and
5 the lack of academic research.

B2B marketing: the den of corruption

In spite of all the achievements, what does not seem to have
changed is the prevalence of rampant corruption. India,
according to Transparency International (2008), is 86th out
of 134 countries in the list of the most corrupt countries.
Indians have nearly $1,500bn parked in Swiss banks
(Alexander, 2010). Within India, the estimates are that 40
per cent to 60 per cent of annual GDP is unaccounted money,
i.e. money on which taxes have not been paid. It is my
assessment that 90 per cent of this unaccounted money is in
the domain of B2B buying and selling. The written codes of
conduct, whistleblower policies, and classes and courses on
corporate ethics and corporate governance, have not worked.
It remains a deep-rooted malice of India. This is reflected in
hiring of transporters, petty civil contractors, imports of
plants and machinery and raw materials, the approval of
suppliers or the inspection of products before they are
dispatched. No matter what area one touches, one would find
ingenious ways and means to give and take bribes.
An old episode is both revealing and disturbing. The year
was 1979. I was barely 33 years old. There was a discussion
on organisational buying behaviour in one of the classes in
industrial marketing for working executives. Most of the
executives would be older than me. I was discussing the
aggrandisement model a non task model as suggested by
Webster and Wind (1972). After sharing the model, I quoted
the authors that this should not be a generalised view, as these
practices would be confined to only a few in the purchasing
department. I cannot recall what triggered very heated
arguments with a student who was the branch manager of a
company supplying castings. The branch manager (a student
in the class) in his raised voice said, So you feel there is no
corruption in B2B buying in India. Take it from me it is
rampant and all pervasive. I do not recall my debating
points, but my summing up was No matter what your views
are, but in this course, I would never allow you to walk away
with the feeling that all B2B buyers are corrupt in India.
Looking back, nothing could have been further from the
truth. What we had in 1979 persists even in 2010. Where is
the remedy? Is it in the views of a successful businessman who
feels that so long as work gets done, corruption should be a
non-issue? Though what he says seems to make lot of sense,
is acceptance the only answer?

In the same article, I suggested hallmarks for successful

industrial marketing. These were:
.
customer orientation;
.
competitor orientation;
.
technology orientation;
.
skill orientation;
.
ethical orientation; and
.
strategic marketing orientation.

Lens 3
The impact on practices: interventions over the years
Over the years, my interventions with industry could be
classified as the following:
.
as a consultant playing an advisory role;
.
market studies covering aspects like customer
satisfaction,, measurement of market demand potential,
competitive scenario, new product management and
newer business opportunities;
.
training programmes for B2B marketing firms; and
.
as a member of the governing board of companies in B2B
marketing.

Looking back, the Indian B2B scenario has changed a lot on

several fronts. The market size has multiplied a great deal,
encouraging B2B marketers to become more innovative and
to spend more on R&D. The competition orientation has
shown a remarkable improvement; companies have become
agile and globally competitive. There has been a sea change in
the customer orientation of companies. The majority of B2B
organisations are conducting customer satisfaction cum
feedback studies on a regular basis. The use of IT has
improved their efficiency and responsiveness, and has helped
them to achieve operational excellence on all fronts.

My assessment is that over the last three decades, 40 per cent

of my time could have been spent on conducting market
studies, 40 per cent on training programmes, and the balance
in playing an advisory role.
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Sharad Sarin

Volume 27 Number 3 2012 160 168

In the training programmes, I found the majority of B2B

firms appreciative and receptive to the newer ideas of
managing their marketing functions. However, a key
concern of the majority has been the applicability of the
concepts in the Indian context. As most of the knowledge and
concepts are borrowed from the Western world, their
relevance in the Indian context has always remained
suspect. Over the years, the availability of Indian cases has
increased subsequently. Thanks to Indian business journals
and search engines, the famine is now a feast of reading on the
Indian context, including B2B marketing.
Since 1976, a deep-rooted passion of mine for B2B firms is
to have marketing practices as sophisticated as B2C firms.
This is because whereas the senior management of B2C firms
are dominated by managers with MBA backgrounds, B2B
firms are more dominated by engineers. It is my assessment
that over last 34 years, at least 25-30 per cent of executives
have fulfilled my dream by practising what they have learned.

plants as well as manufacturing plants. Within 15 days, I

realised the limitation of my classroom inputs. My MBA
course had not made me familiar with the terms like tender
documents, inquiry, proposal, approval of drawing,
pre-tendering activities to help customers to develop product
specifications, release of acceptance orders, and many
more aspects of managing the marketing functions. Soon the
wisdom dawned that industrial marketing is essentially a
cross-functional activity requiring support from several
functions, like R&D, design, production planning and
control (PPC), plant manufacturing, dispatch of material,
legal and many more. Managing this cross-functional support
meant strong and cordial inter-personal relationships with
peers, bosses, supervisors and even workers. I soon realised
that B2B marketing cannot be a one-man activity. Effective
B2B marketing personnel require strong external and internal
customer orientation.
Three small incidents within six months made me aware of
several unique aspects of B2B marketing.
One day a telex came from a branch engineer. It was on
behalf of a customer, seeking information on the delivery of
switchboards. The execution was delayed by a year and the
non-availability of the boards was delaying the commissioning
of the customer plant of. A project worth Rs. 200m (1973
prices) was beinging delayed for the want of Rs. 0.2m worth
of switchboards (0.1 per cent of the projects value).
The strongly worded telex expressed the customers
urgency and annoyance. This was perhaps the first telex of
my working experience that had very adverse comments. My
colleagues suggested that I share the telex immediately with
our boss. Reading the telex, the boss remained unruffled and
asked me several questions When was the order placed?
What delivery did we quote? Is there any penalty associated
with the delay? What was the value of the order? What
equipment circuit breakers, motor starters, protection
relays, etc. were involved? Did I have any idea at which
stage of execution the order was, i.e. had drawings been
prepared and had we received approval, or we were waiting
for some information or clarification? Was the order clear and
if so, had production planning and control released the order
to the plant? Hearing his questions, I drew a blank and felt
nervous. But the questions were an eye-opener for me. These,
in no time, helped me to understand the word delivery in
the context of B2B marketing!
My naivety on the subject was fully exposed. One
unprepared visit to my bosss office was sufficient to
highlight what I had not learnt in my MBA education
including the elective course in industrial marketing.
The second episode concerns when I was asked to meet the
Chief Engineer of a steel plant, who was visiting Mumbai
from his works. He, along with his Purchase Manager, was on
a follow-up visit. L&T had supplied the switchboards for the
power plant of this steel company nearly a year before my
joining L&T. Besides the switchboards, the order included
supply of spares. L&T had not supplied most of the spares.
The list of spares was long and I was totally ignorant about
the unexecuted portion of the order. Unaware of the purpose,
I went to meet the Chief Engineer. The meeting was a
disaster. I was totally unprepared and could not provide
answers to any of his queries. But this one meeting with a
customer was sufficient to bring home a point: never, ever
visit a customer without doing your homework.

B2B marketing: misplaced expectations

It is my view that to date, B2B marketing firms have remained
obsessed with sales. Due to this, the marketing personnel
score high on skills like selling, inter-personal relationships,
order management, the collection of money and related issues
of sales management. There is nothing wrong with this.
Without sales, no organisation can survive. But this has led to
their lopsided development. The majority, to date, remain
unappreciative of any discussion beyond increasing sales.
Expediency and immediacy seem to be the expectations
from training programmes. Some typical comments would
include: Please tell us how to increase sales, Tell us how to
handle competition, especially from low-priced players, or
Our competitors are bribing the customers; please tell us
how to handle this situation. These comments reflect their
apathy towards the theoretical concepts and framework
helping them to broaden their perspectives.
Why blame the sales and marketing team, even their top
management, after interventions through consultancy and
training, expect the magic of instant transformation, from the
very next day? In several consultancy situations, I have sensed
the unreasonable expectations of top management. They feel
that interventions are like a broad antibiotic that will work
from day one, in all the situations. That theoretical and
conceptual input would strengthen their base, and that
transformation will take time, is beyond their comprehension.
An example of an extreme form of expectation is given by a
recent training program, where the Managing Director asked
all 25 executives from President to branch managers to
promise that sales would increase from the next day!

Lens 4
Work experience: recalling some helpful learnings
I was fortunate to join a top ranking engineering firm Larsen
& Toubro Limited of India in 1972, i.e. after my MBA from
the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India. The
division that I joined was Switchgear: Contracts. It was for the
marketing of customised electrical switchboards up to 440
volts. My responsibility included co-ordination between works
and field offices. Electrical switchboards carry electrical
equipment like air circuit breakers, contactors, relays, switch
fuses and allied equipment. These are needed to provide
protection to electrical equipment installed in electrical power
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Sharad Sarin

Volume 27 Number 3 2012 160 168

The third episode concerns when I was asked to carry a

suitcase full of drawings for approval by a steel plant under
construction. The approval was needed to start the
manufacturing of the switchboards. It was a big order and
delay in execution was affecting the production planning and
delivery of orders from other customers. I was unhappy on
two counts travelling on short notice, and carrying a bagful
of drawings that in the normal course of events could have
been dispatched through the mail. No books would ever
include these as being the responsibility of a B2B marketer.
But looking back, these are like routine activities for any sales
person, including those belonging to B2B marketing.
Webster (1978) identified some unique dimensions of B2B
marketing. These were greater functional inter-dependence,
greater techno-commercial complexity, greater buyer-seller
inter-dependence and greater complexity of organisational
buying processes.
Without any work experience my appreciation of these
would have remained merely bookish. With four years of work
experience, my ability to relate to and appreciate the nuances
of the uniqueness of B2B had improved a great deal. It reenforced my belief that work experience even of four to five
years is very helpful to become an effective academic in B2B
marketing.

The ADVISOR studies of Lilien and Little (1976) became a

major motivator to conduct research in the field of industrial
marketing communications. This interest finally culminated
in the subject of my PhD thesis (Sarin, 1990), Although
unpublished, it became a major source for me to share data
on the personal and non-personal communication efforts of
Indian B2B companies.
During 1992-1994, I got chance to interact with Dr Jagdish
Sheth and Dr Atul Parvatiyar both faculty members at
Emory Business School, Atlanta, USA. They had begun work
on relationship marketing and customer relationship
management (CRM). Since 1994, relationship marketing
and CRM have become a major area of interest for me. I
published an article, Relationships in marketing (Sarin,
1995) and offered several MDPs and company programs for
nearly a decade in the area of relationship marketing.
Between industrial marketing communication and
relationship marketing, I also developed an interest in the
works of Cooper (1975) and Webster (1984) on new
industrial products. This interest culminated in an article
entitled Lessons from new product failures: five cases from
India (Sarin and Kapur, 1990). This article was based on
longitudinal observations of new entrepreneurs. It was a very
substantial effort to develop the cases and the framework for
forewarning. Publication of this article was a very satisfying
experience. I became well equipped in discussing the new
product management in the Indian context.
Several sets of comprehensive customer satisfaction studies,
published between 1985 and 2009, were also helpful in
equipping me to conduct workshops with many B2B
organisations. These workshops helped to change the
orientation of B2B marketing firms to become more
customer-centric.
After 2000, I started research in brands for B2B marketers.
In around 2005, two more areas began to interest me. These
were customer value management (CVM), and total product
solutions. All these have been added to the contents of the
elective course. For B2B brands, the ultimate output has been
my book Strategic Brand Management for B2B Markets,
published in October 2010 (Sarin, 2010).
To most of readers, the above would appear like my
biodata. But my purpose was to convey a message to young
faculty members regarding the importance of research in
ones learning and development. As shared elsewhere, the
Indianisation of the course content, both background
reading as well as cases, has been a long-cherished goal from
1976. And I seem to have achieved this.

Lens 5
Becoming a B2B marketing person: tracing my
development
Reflecting, I can identify several interventions that have
strengthened my intellectual and conceptual base in the field
of B2B marketing. The first set, between 1976 and 1982, was
exposure to the works of Corey (1962), Alexander et al.
(1967), Fisher (1969), Ames (1970), Webster and Wind
(1972) and Webster (1984). This not only provided a wider
and deeper understanding of the nature and scope of B2B
marketing; it also helped me in clarifying my own thoughts to
organise the structure and the contents of the B2B marketing
elective course for MBA students. Although by 1976 I had the
confidence in handling the cases, I lacked the intellectual
base in B2B marketing. Reading the publications of these
authors helped in filling this void.
The exposure to the works of these authors also motivated
me to conduct research in several areas. One major attempt
was in the area of organisational buying behaviour (OBB). I
published my first paper, Buying decisions in four Indian
organizations in the journal Industrial Marketing Management
(Sarin, 1983). This helped me a great deal to discuss the
subject of OBB in classes with Indian examples.
Around 1986, I got the opportunity to present a paper on
industrial marketing research in India at the Conference of
the Academy of Marketing Science in the USA. This
presentation, based on my consulting assignments and
research in the B2B area, was helpful in publishing a second
article in Industrial Marketing Management, Industrial
marketing research in India (Sarin, 1987).
The works of Wind, Webster and Cardazo motivated me to
publish small articles in Business World a popular business
journal from India. The titles included Industrial marketing
lacunae (Sarin, 1984), The segmentation virtues (Sarin,
1985), and The buying centre concept (Sarin, 1988). These
also helped to strengthen my repository of Indian examples.

Becoming familiar with the diversity of B2B marketsThe diversity of B2B marketing is enormous. Behind every
B2C brand, there will be several B2B products. To capture
and cover this diversity for a B2B course becomes a major
challenge. The location of XLRI in Jamshedpur was a
fortunate coincidence. With the presence of industrial leaders
like Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tinplate Company, Tata
Refractories Limited, Tayo Rolls, Timken India, Usha
Martin and more than 600 SMEs, Jamshedpur is essentially
a B2B city. This provided, at an early age, a good feel for the
diversity of B2B markets. Supplementing this exposure, were
my consulting assignments in the earlier phase of my
academic career. The assignments covered steel plants,
office equipment manufacturers, plastic manufacturing
units, forging units, material handling units and many more.
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Volume 27 Number 3 2012 160 168

These not only added to my exposure to the diversity of the

product market, but also equipped me with several Indian
examples, and helped me to develop cases. Beyond the 1980s,
such assignments multiplied at an accelerated pace for me.
These kept me in touch with the ground reality of B2B
markets and marketing in India.

.
.

to formulate and implement marketing strategies; and

to prepare for a career in B2B marketing.

The current content of course is organised around some

broad themes. These are:
.
understanding the B2B customer and the market
environment and understanding the basic dimensions of
marketing strategy in the B2B context;
.
understanding the issues in managing the marketing
function around the 4Ps of of marketing mix
management; and
.
sharing newer developments like brand management,
relationship marketing and customer value management
in the B2B context.

My background: benefits of multi disciplinary exposure

Since 1976, I have been an instructor with twin areas of
interest strategic management and marketing management.
I have been teaching courses such as corporate strategy,
strategic planning competitive strategies and globalisation.
Within marketing, I have taught basic courses as well as
elective courses in industrial (B2B) marketing, strategic
marketing, marketing in practice and marketing strategies.
Besides these, I have had an interest in leadership, social
marketing and marketings role in development. All these
together equipped me with wider and deeper perspectives in
the discipline of management. Looking back, the perspectives
have come in very handy to handle a discipline like B2B
marketing. As shared by Ames (1970) and Webster (1978),
B2B marketing is closer to a general management function
requiring a generalists rather than a functionalist
approach. My work experience also corroborates the same.
While this multidisciplinary perspective should be the aim of
all faculty members teaching in business schools, it is almost a
must for B2B marketing instructors.

A review reveals several inadequacies of the content and

coverage. The topics that remain uncovered include:
.
marketing of hi-tech products;
.
marketing of IT services;
.
project and contract marketing;
.
negotiations; and
.
commercial aspects of B2B marketing.
Even the textbooks from North America on B2B marketing
do not cover them. Having taught the subject for 34 years, a
major challenge has been in balancing between old and the
new set of cases and articles. An important goal for me was
to change at least 20 per cent of the reading every year: I have
been able to do this for the cases, but not for the background
reading. The other goal that I had was to have 100 per cent of
cases developed by me. I seem to have achieved this.
As an instructor, I feel the biggest challenge has been to
provide a feel of organisational customer to raw and less
experienced students. It is my view that deep down, it is the
organisational customer as opposed the household
customer that distinguishes B2B marketing from B2C
marketing. I try to achieve this through a field study project
on organisational customers like Tata Steel, Tata Motors, and
so on. It is my assessment that these projects, to a certain
extent, provide a good and first-hand feel of the raw reality of
the organisational customer.

Lens 6
Teaching B2B marketing: the change has been slow and
evolutionary
In the first two years, 1976-1978, I almost covered the same
course outline and the contents of the course that I had
studied at IIM Ahmedabad, which retained the title
Industrial Marketing and Procurement (IM&P). This was
essentially a random collection of cases; most of them were
from Harvard Business School. A welcome development for
me was the exposure to the book Industrial Marketing by
Alexander et al. (1967). With four years work experience at a
hardcore industrial marketing company, the book became
more meaningful. This book for me was a forward movement
from Raymond Coreys book Industrial Marketing: Cases and
Concepts (Corey, 1962).
A seminal book, Organizational Buying by Webster and
Wind (1972), was an enlightening exposure to the world of
organisational buying behaviour (OBB). Even today, I share
the works of these authors. I can recall my first sharing their
work on OBB in 1979 with the marketing executives of the
Steel Authority of India (SAIL). The experience of receiving
encouraging feedback for the session set the tone for my
subsequent handling of the elective course and other training
programmes. Although I am still 100 per cent a devotee to the
case method of teaching, for my B2B course I started
following a mix of both cases and conceptual discussions.
A review of my course outline reflects that over the years,
the emphasis has shifted from pure functional approach to a
holistic marketing approach (Kotler, 2003). I have maintained
the main objectives of the elective B2B course for the MBA
programme as:
.
to share perspectives in B2B marketing;
.
to strengthen the knowledge and conceptual base in B2B
marketing;

Rekindling interest in B2B marketing in Indian

business schools
Yoram Wind (2006), in his article Blurring the lines: is there
a need to rethink industrial marketing?, identified five
developments that are diffusing the line between B2C and
B2B marketing. Based on these developments, he makes a
case for breaking the silos and cross-sharing ideas between
B2C and B2B marketing. If this happens, it would be a very
helpful development.
However, to me, a major challenge is the declining interest
in B2B marketing over the years in India. Many business
schools have stopped offering B2B marketing as an elective
course in the two-year management programme. The primary
reason for this is attractive job opportunities in finance,
consulting and B2C marketing. B2B marketing firms are
unable to offer attractive job profiles and matching
remuneration packages. Although with the increasing
popularity of a one-year programme for executives with five
years of experience interest in B2B marketing is likely to
revive, the challenge for B2B marketing is also to regain its
popularity amongst students of two-year MBA programmes.
Hutt and Speh (2007) mentioned the increasing popularity of
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Sharad Sarin

Volume 27 Number 3 2012 160 168

B2B marketing in US business schools. I am hopeful for the

same in Indian business schools in the future.
Besides the interest of students, we also need to motivate
young faculty to teach B2B marketing. There is an acute
shortage of faculty members with sufficient familiarity with
B2B marketing situations. The discipline, from the point of
view of faculty members, does not provide the glamour and
wider platform available from B2C marketing. A feasible
alternative is to attract executives with work experience in
B2B marketing to teach this subject. Like me, they too would
benefit by strengthening their intellectual base before they
conducted courses.

very limited utility for a course like B2B marketing for MBA
students. Recently, my lingering unease has found lot of
solace in the words of Santosh Desai (2010), a well-known
expert on brands and advertising in India. His words sum up
very well what I have believed for the last 40 years: Business
is an amorphous body and it can not be reduced to a model
that succeeds following a set formulae.
What is true for business would also be true for business-tobusiness marketing!

Lens 8
Creating the Indian intellectual capital
For years, my favourite quote on the Indian academic scene
has been: India is context rich but concept poor.
Business schools in India are nothing but extended arms of
business schools from the West. Except for their location and
lack of sophistication of the physical infrastructure, they appear
as poor cousins of Western institutions. Dependency on
Western intellectual capital is all pervasive, be it classrooms or
libraries. In spite of the cynicism that made in USA will not
work in India, Indian business schools and their instructors are
not able to detach themselves from the intellectual output of
Western countries. I cannot visualise this dependence
disappearing even in the next 30 years. But a focused
attempt and prioritisation can help. Although it has taken a
long time, in last 30 years, an output of nearly 16 articles, 25
cases and more than 50 consultancy projects have facilitated
the process of achieving nearly 80 per cent Indianisation of the
total content of my teaching, be it elective courses or the
management development programme. This building of my
own intellectual capital is a very satisfying experience for me.

Lens 7
A plea to authors in Western countries
Practice the dharma of simplicity
Indian academia is heavily dependent on the works of North
American authors. This is likely to continue for a long time.
Like me, younger faculty will also continue to depend and
benefit from them. My long association with the works of
authors from Western countries reveals the over-proliferation of
frameworks, figures, models and jargon in the textbooks. As an
example, the recent textbook of Hutt and Speh (2007) would
have at least seven to ten frameworks in each and every
chapter. Similarly, the book by Anderson and Narus (2003)
has figures and tables on practically every second page. Even
with 34 years of teaching experience, I find it very difficult to
comprehend their content. I wonder what the receptivity of
students and practising executives to these would be. It is my
own view that the new texts are over-stuffed and have reached a
stage of diminishing returns. I am tempted to quote Drucker to
reflect my views. These were quoted by Trout (1999) in his
book The Power of Simplicity:

Lens 9

One of the most degenerative tendencies of the last forty years is the belief
that if you are understandable, you are vulgar. When I was growing up, it was
taken for granted that economists, physicists, psychologists leaders in any
discipline would make them understood Einstein spent years with three
different collaborators to make his theory of relativity accessible to the
layman. Even John Maynard Keynes tried hard to make his economics
accessible.Just the other day, I heard a senior scholar seriously reject a
younger colleagues work because more than five people could understand
what he is doing literally.We can not afford such arrogance. Knowledge is
power which is why people who had it in the past often tried to make a secret
of it. In post capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make
it productive not from hiding it.

My wish list: if I had another 30 years for B2B

marketing in India
.
As a priority write a textbook on B2B marketing
management, rooted in India.
.
Help in the development of an association of B2B
marketers in India. This could be associated with the B2B
associations of the USA and Europe.
.
Help in the development of instructors at least 300 for
the teaching of B2B marketing. Through them, make an
attempt to develop at least 300 cases, i.e. 10 cases per
year. These can include hi-tech industries especially
mobile and IT and management of experiences of new
products and services that are in the early phase of
introduction into India.
.
Conduct workshops and seminars on brands in the
context of B2B marketing to motivate Indian giants to
become global brands, like GE, Siemens, ABB, DuPont
and many more have done.
.
Attempt to rekindle interest in B2B marketing, both as a
course and as a discipline.
.
Conduct seminars to create public awareness and to weed
out or reduce corruption in B2B marketing practices in
India.
.
Work to have a reverse flow of knowledge from India to
the developed triad of Europe, the USA and Japan.
.
Conduct seminars to create a knowledge base in the areas
of marketing of projects and contracts marketing.

We as researchers and authors should always remember what

Larry Bossidy[1] observed: Complexity is not the sign of an
intellectual gift, making things simple is.
Do not reduce B2B teaching to models alone
Nearly 15 years ago, i.e. around 1995, a good friend and a
member of the marketing faculty in a well known US
university, asked What is so great in B2B marketing that it
needs a separate elective course?. Unaware that he too was
teaching B2B marketing, my defence was that It deals with
organisational customers and so it requires a different
treatment. How do you cover these in your course? was
the next question. Mainly cases, backed up by reading
material was my answer. To his question So you do not
discuss any models?, I responded Only the descriptions on
organizational buying behaviour His last comment was Oh!
But I discuss mainly the models in my B2B course.
This conversation left me with lot of unease, as I believe
that teaching models may be good for PhD students, but has a
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Volume 27 Number 3 2012 160 168

Besides my wish list, I have a strong urge to bring glory to the

discipline of B2B marketing, which is all pervasive yet
invisible. It is widely known that behind every B2C brand
there are many B2B brands. Similarly, it is often quoted that
B2B marketing accounts for nearly 50 per cent to 60 per cent
of all the exchanges of any countrys GDP. Yet the discipline,
at least in the marketing fraternity, has not been accorded the
importance it deserves. It is my view that the majority of B2C
marketers are either ignorant or indifferent to the
contributions of B2B marketing to the economy. The time
has come for world to recognise this invisible hand which is
driving the entire economy from underground mines to
glittering, glowing signs all over the globe.

Kotler, P. (2003), Marketing Management, 11th ed., Prentice

Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Lilien, G.L. and Little, J.D.C. (1976), The ADVISOR
project: a study of industrial marketing budgets, Sloan
Management Review, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 17-33.
Sarin, S. (1983), Buying decisions in four Indian
organizations, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 11,
February, pp. 25-37.
Sarin, S. (1984), Industrial marketing lacunae, Business
World, 22 October-4 November.
Sarin, S. (1985), The segmentation virtues, Business World,
February, pp. 4-17.
Sarin, S. (1987), Industrial marketing research in India,
Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 257-64.
Sarin, S. (1988), The buying centre concept, Business
World, 31 December.
Sarin, S. (1990), Management of non-personnel
communication efforts for industrial marketing: a study of
Indian firms, unpublished thesis, Pune University, Pune.
Sarin, S. (1995), Relationships in marketing, The Economic
Times, 12-18 July, pp. 4-5.
Sarin, S. (2010), Strategic Brand Management for B2B
Markets: A Road Map for Organizational Transformation,
Response Books, New Delhi.
Sarin, S. and Kapur, G.M. (1990), Lessons from new
product failures, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 19
No. 4, pp. 301-13.
Transparency International (2008), Corruption perception
index, available at: www.rediff.com (accessed 9 May 2009).
Trout, J. (with Rivkin, S.) (1999), The Power of Simplicity, Tata
McGraw-Hill, Delhi.
Wind, Y. (2006), Blurring the lines: is there a need to rethink
industrial marketing?, Journal of Business & Industrial
Marketing, Vol. 21 No. 7, pp. 474-81.
Webster, F.E. Jr (1978), Management science in industrial
marketing, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 48, pp. 21-7.
Webster, F.E. Jr (1984), Industrial Marketing, 2nd ed., Wiley,
New York, NY.
Webster, F.E. and Wind, Y. (1972), Organizational Buying
Behaviour, Foundations of Marketing Series, Prentice Hall,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

Summing up
The Indian B2B scenario has changed a great deal. The
impact of competition and globalisation has transformed B2B
marketing practices beyond recognition. My reflections reveal
that no matter how I view my contribution, it would remain
insignificant in front of the massive output of North
Americans and the Western economies. My wish list
includes the building of Indian intellectual capital. However,
I am not sure whether this would be able to influence the
practices of Indian B2B marketers significantly. As in the past,
for several decades in future, Indian marketers may have to
live on borrowed wisdom. But in an inter-connected, flat
world, this should not be embarrassing so long as it helps to
improve practices. Similarly to me, my younger colleagues
should not shun knowledge developed anywhere else. But like
Western scholars, they should remain obsessed with
producing Indian intellectual capital. The one-way
street always has the scope to become a two-way street.

Note
1 Lawrence Bossidy (CEO, Allied Signal, 1991-1997),
quoting from Charan and Tichy (2000).

References
Alexander, P.C. (2010), India on the road to failure?, Asian
Age, 11 August, available at: www.asianage.com/columnists
Alexander, R.S., Cross, J.S. and Hill, R.M. (1967), Industrial
Marketing, Richard D. Irwin, Homewood, IL, (Indian edition
published by D.B. Taraporevala Sons and Co., 1975).
Ames, C.E. (1970), Trapping vs substance in industrial
marketing, Harvard Business Review, pp. 93-102.
Anderson, J.C. and Narus, J.A. (2003), Business Marketing
Management, Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Charan, R. and Tichy, N. (2000), Every Business Is a Growth
Business, Three River Press, New York, NY.
Cooper, R.G. (1975), Why new products fail industrial,
Marketing Management, Vol. 4, pp. 315-26.
Corey, R. (1962), Industrial Marketing: Cases and Concepts, 1st
ed., Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Desai, S. (2010), Are B schools mere resource allocators?,
The Economic Times, 26 April.
Fisher, L. (1969), Industrial Marketing, Century, London.
Hutt, M.D. and Speh, T.W. (2007), Business Marketing
Management: B2B, 1st Indian reprint, Anubha Printers,
Noida.

Further reading
Ames, B.C. and Halvacek, J.D. (1984), Managerial Marketing
for Industrial Firms, Random House, New York, NY.
Hague, P. and Jackson, P. (1994), The Power of Industrial
Brands, McGraw-Hill, London.
Khandwala, P.N. (2010), New Public Management,
Ahmedabad Management Association, Ahmedabad.
Lilien, G.L. (1976), ADVISOR 2: modeling the marketing
mix decision for industrial products, Management Science,
Vol. 25, February, pp. 191-304.

About the author

Dr Sharad Sarin, a Senior Faculty Member at XLRI, a
leading private management institute in India, was born in
1946. He holds a BE (Electrical), a MBA and a PhD
(Marketing). He has been Visiting Faculty to the IIM at
Ahmedabad (India), the IIM at Ranchi (India), the University
of Rhode Island, Kingston (USA), Colorado University at
Boulder (USA) and Helsinki School of Economics (Finland).
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My years with B2B marketing in India

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing

Sharad Sarin

Volume 27 Number 3 2012 160 168

Professor Sarins major areas of interest are competition and

globalisation, strategic management, general marketing,
industrial marketing, marketings role in development,
relationship marketing and strategic marketing. Over the last
40 years, he has been involved in several consultancy
assignments in marketing and strategic management.
Besides consulting, Professor Sarin has been conducting
training programmes for senior and middle-level business
executives. In November 1995, Professor Sarin was named
amongst the top five teachers of business management in
India by Business Standard, a leading business daily newspaper
in India. Professor Sarin is widely known as the originator of
the novel concept of the Marketing Fair. He has recently
published a book, Strategic Brand Management for B2B
Markets. Sharad Sarin can be contacted at: sarin@xlri.ac.in

Noting the impact of competition and globalisation, which

has transformed B2B marketing practices beyond recognition,
and the massive output of North American and Western
economies, he has a wish list to be achieved if he had
another 30 years for B2B marketing in India:
.
Write, on a priority basis, a textbook on B2B marketing
management, rooted in India.
.
Help in the development of an association of B2B
marketers in India. This could be associated with the B2B
associations of the USA and Europe.
.
Help in the development of instructors at least 300-plus
for teaching of B2B marketing. Through them, make an
attempt to develop at least 300 cases, i.e. 10 cases per
year. These can include hi-tech industries especially
mobile and IT, and the management of experiences of new
products and services, which are in their early phase of
introduction in India.
.
Conduct workshops and seminars on brands in the
context of B2B marketing to motivate the Indian giants to
become global brands like GE, Siemens, and many more.
.
Attempt to rekindle the interest in B2B marketing both
as a course and as a discipline.
.
Conduct seminars to create public awareness, to weed out
or reduce corruption from the practices of B2B marketing
in India. Work to have a reverse flow of knowledge from
India to the developed triad of Europe, the USA and Japan.
.
Conduct seminars to create knowledge base in the area
of marketing of projects and contracts marketing.

Executive summary and implications for

managers and executives
This summary has been provided to allow managers and executives
a rapid appreciation of the content of the article. Those with a
particular interest in the topic covered may then read the article in
toto to take advantage of the more comprehensive description of the
research undertaken and its results to get the full benefit of the
material present.
The opening up of the Indian economy post-1991 led to the
rapid toning up of the countrys B2B marketers. They needed
to survive in a globally competitive environment and the first
five years witnessed Indian companies big or small trying to
obtain certifications like ISO 9000, 9001 and 14000 and the
like. These were seen as passports for their export business.
In addition, other initiatives, like total quality management,
total productive management, Six Sigma, value analysis,
supply chain management and many more were introduced.
Yet, in spite of all the achievements and changes, what does
not seem to have changed is the prevalence of rampant
corruption. So laments Dr Sharad Sarin, a Senior Faculty
Member at XLRI, a leading private management institute in
India.He notes that India is one of the most corrupt countries
and it is estimated that Indians have nearly $1,500 billion
parked in Swiss banks. It is also reckoned that 40 per cent to
60 per cent of annual GDP is unaccounted money (i.e. on
which taxes have not been paid) and it is Dr Sarins
assessment that 90 per cent of the unaccounted money is in
the domain of B2B buying and selling. The written codes of
conduct, whistle blowers policies, classes and courses on
corporate ethics and corporate governance, have not worked.
Its a deep-rooted malice of India. This is reflected in the
hiring of transporters, petty civil contractors, imports of
plants and machinery and raw material, approval of suppliers
or inspection of products before they are dispatched. No
matter what area one touches, one would find ingenious ways
and means to give and take bribes.
Over the last 40 years Dr Sarin has been involved in
marketing and strategic management consultancy
assignments and conducting training programs for senior
and middle level business executives. In My years with B2B
marketing in India: reflections and learnings from a journey of
40 years, he reviews his association with the discipline.

In Dr Sarins view, Indias B2B marketing firms have remained

obsessed with sales. Because of this, the marketing personnel
score high on skills like selling, inter-personal relationships,
order management, collection of money and related issues of
sales management. There is nothing wrong with this. Without
sales, no organisation can survive. But this has led to lopsided
development. A majority remains non-appreciative of any
discussions beyond increasing sales. Expediency and
immediacy seem to be their expectations from the training
programs. Some typical comments would include: Please tell
us how to increase the sales.; Tell us how to handle
competition, especially from low-priced players; or Our
competitors are bribing the customers. Please tell us how to
handle this situation. These comments reflect their apathy
towards the theoretical concepts and framework helping them
to broaden their perspectives.
Dr Sarin hopes for the building of Indian intellectual
capital, but says: I am not sure whether this would be able to
influence the practices of Indian B2B marketers significantly.
As in the past, for several decades in future, Indian marketers
may have to live on borrowed wisdom. But in an interconnected, flat world, this should not be embarrassing so long
as it helps to improve practices. Similarly to me, my younger
colleagues should not shun knowledge developed anywhere
else. But like Western scholars, they should remain obsessed
with producing Indian intellectual capital. The one-way
street always has the scope to become a two-way street.
(A precis of the article My years with B2B marketing in India:
reflections and learnings from a journey of 40 years. Supplied by
Marketing Consultants for Emerald.)

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168